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Wednesday, 10 December 2014

Books with Friends – The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham – reviewed by Chris King

And today we have another guest review by Mr Chris King. To read his last review, please click here.

What strikes me most
upon first reading that seminal, yet oft forgotten book ,The Day of the Triffids is how different it is from the movie. I already mentioned that the War of the
Worlds movies are very different to what happens in the book; it’s the same
with The Day of the Triffids. While
the triffids fall from a meteor in the film and scatter themselves across the
planet, the book has the triffid seed originate in a much stranger place known
as ‘Russia’.

The story begins as a
blinded man wakes up on a Wednesday which famously feels like it is a Sunday. The
blind man comes to realise that everyone around him is blind too. This is as a
result of watching the celestial event of the Earth travelling through comet
dust which burns around the atmosphere, creating the most wonderful bright
colours. Unlike the others, Bill Masen was blinded before the comet shower and
so when he takes off his bandages, he is a seeing man in a blind man’s world.
After discovering this, the story shifts back to before the comet debris when
Bill worked as a bioengineer cultivating and growing triffids for their fuel
uses and the coming of the triffids was certainly a slow invasion. First they
appeared, then one or two people were stung, then they were pruned back from stinging
and everyone became used to them, humans being frivolous and their nature...
ooh a new shiny thing!

What was I saying? Ah
yes the triffids. Now, the triffids are not the main problem through the course
of the book. Rather it is the deterioration of society. With so many blinded
people who are not able to cope, factions form around sighted people. Sighted
people are abducted from other groups to lead their own groups of blind people
and food becomes a greater problem than it was before the mass blindness. While
scavenging on the streets of London is fine in the short term, it is unsustainable
and food is not being collected and distributed. After all, without sight
humans struggle to do the most basic unfamiliar tasks without assistance. By
showing the value we have on eyes and the way people with sight in a sightless
world are treated as having superpowers Wyndham makes it abundantly clear that
we over-rely on our eyes. That is the most obvious part of humanity Wyndham
comments on.

Much like The War of the Worlds – from which
Wyndham derived much of his influence – science-fiction sets up a fantastical
occurrence to better analyse the human condition. In The Day of the Triffids various human values are criticised: the
desire to give up; the feeling of anger we seem to have towards someone failing
to help us overpowering the feeling of hatred to our enemies; our constant
readiness for violence even while preaching and hoping for peace; and the
paradoxes of fear. So, when missiles are sent up to orbit Earth that could launch
viruses and kill people, the United States is praised for saying straight away
that it has no intention of setting up orbiting missiles to directly release
viruses onto the people of the world. When many major powers do not make
similar declarations the people of the United States turn to criticise their
government for not preparing for a way of warfare that others clearly had.

Unlike in my review of The War of the Worlds,
I do not think the title is appropriate. ‘The day our eyes were closed’ is what
I would have gone for. The book is much more about the loss of sight and human
warfare than it ever is about triffids. Triffids are certainly strange
creatures, as is frequently pointed out – but they only become anything close
to a threat because humans cannot see. It also lasts far longer than a day. The
triffids have to grow back their pruned stingers and try to reproduce before
they are able to hurt humans, who had long been able to defeat them with a pike
or pointed rock on the end of a long stick. The triffids spread only because of
the breakdown of human society; they are de-facto in charge through coincidence,
while humans have to re-learn self-sufficiency and keep trying to assign gender
roles.

Title aside, the book
is well worth a read. Although, given the choice, I would take The War of the Worlds over The Day of the Triffids. This may be due
in no small part to three-legged fighting-machines with heat-rays being cooler
than three-rooted plants with stingers. Either way these early science-fiction
books are well worth a read. And with the grasping nature of The Day of the Triffids’ first chapter
keeping you interested through the exposition-laden second chapter – which is
nevertheless filled with juicy foreshadowing – you will be hard pressed to put
the book down.

After all, this is
basically a zombie apocalypse book, except the slow moving triffids replace the
shambling zombies in a broken-down society where people are scavenging for
survival supplies. If you are sick of zombies and want to move away from them
(no real rush, they tend to be slow moving) then The Day of the Triffids will easy you out but keep the themes.

Once again I will
finish on a quote to illustrate a key theme in the book as I leave you to get
on with your lives:

‘The human spirit
continued much as before – ninety-five per cent of it wanting to live in peace;
and the other five per cent considering its chances if it should risk starting
anything.’

Thanks again to Chris King for this review.

Next week it'll be back to me (Katie); as Christmas approaches, I think instead of reviews I may give a run down of my favourite ever books. Much as I've been absolutely loving reading all these contemporary books, I do want the opportunity to waffle on about Victorian novels. Well, some. I promise they won't all be Victorian.